“Music Recording and Production" is a joint effort of the Departments of Music and Electrical and Computer Engineering. It has been given each Fall semester since 2008.

The course is in two “sections,” one for Engineering majors and the other for Arts & Sciences majors. The sections do not meet separately—one is a subset of the other.

This course is very popular and fills quickly! You can only register with the permission of the instructor. To insure your place in it, contact Prof. Lehrman as soon as registration opens.

Arts & Sciences students sign up for Music 65*:
This section meets in Granoff 252, the computer lab, Tuesday and Thursday 3:00-4:15, with Prof. Lehrman.
The prerequisities for this course are:
• basic music literacy
• the ability to play an instrument
• Math 5 or AP Calculus†
• Physics 1 and 2 (or 1N and 2N) or AP Physics†
    †one or both of these may be waived if you have taken Music 64 or 66
NOTE: On approximately four Thursdays, Music 65 students will be required to attend the evening lecture (6:00-7:15). Please contact Prof. Lehrman if you have a conflict.

Engineering students sign up for EE 65:**
This section will meet with the other section in Granoff 252, Tuesday and Thursday 3:00-4:15, and will also meet with Prof. Bates in the same room on Thursday, 6:00-7:15.
The prerequisites for EE 65 are the same as Music 65 (with no waivers), plus ES-3 (may be taken concurrently, with permission).

*If you are an Arts & Sciences student planning to get the Sound Recording and Production emphasis of the Music Engineering Minor, you must enroll in EE 65, which means you must be taking, or have taken, ES 3.

**Engineering majors are allowed to sign up for Music 65 if they wish, but they will not get engineering credit for the course.

Topics covered in the course will include:
• Acoustics • Perception • Transducers • Microphone theory and practice • Speakers and power amplifiers • Mixing consoles • Digital recording • Editing in ProTools • CD mastering • Effects • Multitrack recording • Mix automation • MIDI • Audio with video

Engineering majors will be getting extra material in the mathematics, physics, acoustics, and electronics involved in audio recording and processing, including:
• Vibrational modes • Microphone and speaker design • Mixing console architecture • A/D converter design • Digital filter design • Time-stretching algorithms • Noise-cancelling technology • Data compression • Synchronization

There will be several hands-on projects, using the Music department's equipment and facilities, including Distler Recital Hall, Fisher Performance Hall, and other spaces in the Granoff Music Center. These projects will involve recording voices, instruments, and groups, and mixing and processing new and existing recordings.

Tom Bates teaches the Engineering section of this course. Mr. Bates has been a recording engineer and producer for 40 years and has won nine Grammy Awards, and been nominated numerous times. He has recorded many major orchestras, classical soloists, opera companies, jazz performers, and pop stars including Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul Winter, Mark Knopfler, and Cyndi Lauper. He has been the music mixer for several Emmy-winning documentaries and Academy Award-nominated films, and was audio director for Saturday Night Live. He recorded the first commercial CD produced in Tufts' Distler Recital Hall, the Matt Savage Trio, in December 2007.

On the hardware side, Mr. Bates was the co-founder of TimeLine, the premier manufacturer of audio/video synchronizers in the last years of tape, and was co-designer of their flagship Lynx module. He has also served as a design consultant for a number of professional audio companies, including Grace Design and Yamaha.

Paul Lehrman teaches the Music section. He has been on the Tufts faculty for 12 years, teaching courses in Music for Multimedia, film scoring, and Electronic Musical Instrument Design. Since the Granoff Music Center opened he has been Coordinator of Music Technology, and he designed the computer music lab. He is the director of Tufts' Music Engineering Minor program.

Dr. Lehrman is a composer, writer, and consultant, and has had works performed at Carnegie Hall, at London Festival Hall, at Boston's and San Francisco's Symphony Halls, and on PBS-TV, History Channel, A&E, and Discovery Networks. He is one of the leading experts on MIDI and computer music, and was principal author of the definitive college textbook, MIDI For the Professional, which is still in print after 20 years. He has been a writer, columnist, and contributing editor for magazines such as Mix, Wired, Keyboard, Sound on Sound, and Electronic Musician. As a filmmaker, his work has been shown on PBS and at numerous festivals around the world. He has served as a design, documentation, and user-interface consultant for many software and hardware companies including Kurzweil, Avid, Yamaha, Roland, AKG, JBL, Mark of the Unicorn, Synthogy, and Apple.